A motorcoach barreling south on Interstate 95 plowed into stopped traffic in a Virginia work zone early Friday morning, killing five people, including two children, and injuring 44 others. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said the driver, a Chinese-born U.S. citizen from Staten Island, could not speak English and had obtained his commercial driver's license in New York State just last year.
The crash happened just after 2:30 a.m. in Stafford County, near Quantico. The bus was traveling from New York City to Charlotte, North Carolina, when it failed to slow for traffic backing up ahead of the work zone, the New York Post reported. The collision triggered a chain reaction involving at least six vehicles. One car caught fire.
Four of the five dead belonged to a single family from Greenfield, Massachusetts. Dmitri Doncev, 45, a registered nurse; his wife Ecaterina, 44; their daughter Emily, 13; and their son Mark, 7, were all killed inside a Chevrolet Suburban struck by the bus. A 25-year-old woman from Worcester, Massachusetts, also riding in the Suburban, was the fifth fatality. Her name has not been released.
The Doncevs had immigrated to the United States in 2008. They were on their way to South Carolina for a family wedding when the bus struck their vehicle. A family friend, Anatoliy Bublik, described the trip and the family's background on a GoFundMe page set up after the crash.
Dmitri Doncev's brother, Iuri Doncev, posted a statement on Facebook:
"With broken hearts, we share the devastating loss of our beloved brother and his family in the tragic accident on South I-95 in Virginia early this morning."
Dmitri worked in the mental health unit at Holyoke Medical Center. Emily and Mark were students at Providence Christian Academy, which released its own statement confirming the deaths.
"Providence Christian Academy is deeply saddened by the tragic loss of the Doncev family, following a motor vehicle accident on Interstate 95. The Doncev family was a cherished part of our school community, and their loss is being felt deeply by our students, families, faculty, and staff."
A family of four, parents and two young children, wiped out on a highway in the middle of the night, heading to celebrate a relative's wedding. That is the human cost of what happened on I-95.
The driver, Jing S. Dong, 48, was among the 44 people hospitalized after the crash. Three of the hospitalized remained in critical condition. Criminal charges against Dong are pending as Virginia State Police investigate.
Duffy identified the bus operator as E&P Travel, Just The News reported. The company was running the route from New York City to Charlotte. Dong, a naturalized U.S. citizen originally from China, received his commercial driver's license from New York State in 2024, despite, Duffy said, lacking English proficiency.
The Transportation Secretary did not mince words. In a public statement, Duffy laid out the administration's position plainly:
"Unacceptable. This is exactly why we are holding states' accountable, enforcing the rules of the road, and cracking down on drivers who can't speak English. If you can't be properly trained, read our road signs, or communicate with law enforcement, you have no business driving a bus."
Federal regulations require commercial drivers to be able to read and speak English well enough to communicate with the public, understand road signs, and respond to official inquiries. A driver who cannot meet that standard should not hold a CDL, period. Yet New York issued one to Dong in 2024.
The question that demands an answer is straightforward: How did that happen? Who signed off? And what training, if any, did Dong actually complete? Duffy announced that the administration is reviewing New York's licensing records, training documentation, and the driver's full history. The White House was notified of the crash, underscoring the severity of the incident.
The Transportation Secretary extended his warning beyond the driver himself:
"Any company, trainer, or school that contributed to putting an unqualified driver on the road will face intense scrutiny."
That statement targets the entire pipeline, from the CDL training school that prepared Dong, to E&P Travel for putting him behind the wheel of a bus full of passengers, to New York State for issuing the license in the first place. If the preliminary facts hold up, every link in that chain failed.
Virginia State Police said the preliminary investigation showed traffic was slowing southbound for the work zone when the bus failed to slow and struck six vehicles. The cause of Dong's failure to stop, whether mechanical failure, inattention, impairment, fatigue, or something else, has not been determined. But the English-proficiency issue raises a separate, systemic concern that exists regardless of what caused the crash itself.
A commercial bus driver who cannot read highway signs, understand work-zone warnings, or communicate with dispatchers and law enforcement is a danger on the road before anything goes wrong. The crash drew national attention precisely because it illustrates a failure that should have been caught long before a bus left New York City at midnight.
New York's CDL process has come under federal scrutiny before, and Duffy's response suggests the administration views this crash as more than an isolated tragedy. His language, "holding states accountable", signals that the federal government intends to examine whether states are rubber-stamping commercial licenses without verifying basic English competency.
This is not an abstract regulatory debate. It is about whether the person driving a 40-ton bus on a crowded interstate at 2:30 in the morning can read a sign that says "WORK ZONE AHEAD, REDUCE SPEED." The administration has been focused on accountability in federal operations, and Duffy's response here extends that principle to state-level licensing that puts the public at risk.
The crash also raises questions about the bus company itself. E&P Travel's safety record, its hiring and vetting practices, and whether it verified Dong's qualifications before assigning him a route, all of that will presumably be part of the federal review Duffy announced. The motorcoach industry has long faced scrutiny over cut-rate operators that prioritize cheap fares over safety. Whether E&P Travel fits that pattern remains to be seen.
Several critical questions remain open. Investigators have not disclosed what specific criminal charges Dong may face. They have not explained how he obtained his CDL, whether he used a translator, whether the testing process was conducted in a language other than English, or whether the system simply failed to screen him. The name of the fifth victim, the 25-year-old woman from Worcester, has not been released.
The cause of the crash itself is still under investigation. It is possible that fatigue, a medical event, or mechanical failure played a role entirely separate from the language issue. But even if the English-proficiency question turns out to be unrelated to the immediate cause, it remains a serious regulatory failure. A driver who cannot communicate in English should never have been licensed to operate a commercial vehicle, full stop.
The current administration has shown willingness to intervene when institutional failures put lives at risk. Duffy's swift public response suggests this case will not quietly fade into a bureaucratic review.
Dmitri Doncev came to this country in 2008. He built a life, became a nurse, raised two children, joined a church community. His family was heading to a wedding. They were doing everything right.
Jing S. Dong got a commercial driver's license from New York State in 2024. He could not speak English. He got behind the wheel of a bus anyway, and five people are dead.
The Doncev family did not die because of bad luck. They died on a highway where a state licensing system, a bus company, and a training pipeline all failed to do the one thing they exist to do: keep unqualified drivers off the road. Duffy is right to demand answers. The families who buried their dead this week deserve more than promises from officials. They deserve a system that works.
When the rules exist and nobody enforces them, the rules are just paper. Five people paid for that with their lives.
